The Authentic Being and the Vital Double

Speaking to the meditation group in his home in Highgate, London, 24 June 1981. At this time he was working on his book 'The Origins of Man and Universe’ and writing about the Authentic Being, the Vital Double and the various Levels of the Mind within the cosmic structure he had envisioned. The description here, edited from a transcript, is his response to questions from members of the group who were seeking explanations. It supplements the detail in the book.

The Authentic Being represents the field - the field of reality attenuated down into the thing that we record, register and perceive with in this world. The Vital Double is the ground of man, his Immortal Self.

The Authentic Being is the only thing that goes on, through life and death, and is forever present. I wake up at night and am aware of everything around me, with not a touch of emotion or fear; my authentic being has been awake all the time. It is the real part of us, always rising up further and further towards the field, the abstraction. Its character or nature is reality. In us it is our innocence, that we know as always there, even when we are weary of life and feel shabby or in a mess. It is our soul personified, the thing that wants to go home and be finished with this life forever. Beyond death it joins up with the Empiric Soul, the evolutionary soul, before coming back down to create a self out of that empiric essence and come into birth again. It is always rising up towards the field and is always pushed back down towards the ground, into the world - grounded by the self. 

The Authentic Being, in your meditation, is the attention; and the attention is all you are. Then, coming down through that you enter the body, get down through all the attachments and relationships and how you are feeling, down to the bottom of sensation. Down in the very sensation of our being, we get to the Vital Double. That sensation is the door to reality, revealing no more in experience than the Vital Double wants to allow us. If we can get there, there is no need to do anymore - it’s nothing, the ‘end of it’ as far as we are concerned.

The ability to get to this ground of our own consciousness is to be in the state of needing nothing more. But then, when I do need anything, I shall be informed in my stillness. For the Vital Double can show itself in its revelations, its knowledge of truth. And I shall be entered by love. All revelation, beauty, love comes through from this point.

It is possible to go through the Vital Double, the door to reality, and enter a world after death. But reality will reveal what it wants; not what we think we ought to be finding. Reality is in charge. I do not need to know anything. I am now united with my very being, my immortal double.

When one descends into the unconscious and becomes one with the Vital Double, one realises immortality. ‘It is finished. All over. I am immortal. I cannot die.’ The field is now grounded in oneself.




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